“That’s what I am afraid of,” Colwin muttered under his breath.
Sarah ignored him, eyeing Emma commandingly and Emma reluctantly got off the couch and followed her to the kitchen.
Here it comes, Emma thought nervously as she followed their mother from the room.
“Now! We can chat without worrying about them,” Sarah said briskly. “Has it just been awful?”
Emma thought for several moments that she would burst into tears at the sympathy in the other woman’s eyes. “A lot of it,” she admitted.
Sarah tsked. “Well, you certainly had an awful time of it! I thought I had a very bad time when I first came, but it pales by comparison to what you must have been through. You look so battered, you poor thing!”
Emma sniffed. “I was so scared! I don’t know what I would’ve done if Col and Aydin hadn’t come along!”
Sarah gathered her into an impulsive hug. “Then it’s a good thing they did … although I don’t mind telling you it’s been a nightmare for me waiting and wondering if they were alright.”
“I can’t imagine what my parents have been going through.”
“Ah!” Sarah said, nothing more, just ah—as if she’d found the root of the trouble.
And Emma admitted that that was most of it.
“Well, we’ll certainly have to do something about that! We can’t have you worrying about them being worried. How far along around you, sweety?”
Sarah blinked at her and burst into tears. “That’s the problem! I don’t know if I am! They’re going to be so disappointed if I’m not!”
Sarah tsked. “Don’t be silly, child! Of course you’re pregnant! I know my boys!” she said with a chuckle.
Emma felt her face heat. “You really think so?”
Sarah studied her thoughtfully. “How long have you been with them?”
Emma thought it over. “I don’t know—a little over a month—maybe closer to two.”
Sarah nodded. “You see!”
Emma felt a thrill go through her, but she was still doubtful. “You don’t think I could’ve just missed my cycle because of everything else?”
“No,” Sarah said firmly. “If you’ve missed your time of the month one of those very virile centaurs in my living room is going to be a father! Mark my words! Now, what else is distressing you?”
Emma sniffed, thinking it over. Finally, feeling distinctly uncomfortable, she looked around Sarah’s kitchen.
Sarah grimaced. “Well, it isn’t like the old world, that’s for sure, but we don’t lack for comforts as you can see. I can only imagine what sort of wonders they’ve come up with since I left, but as you can see, this world has something that one doesn’t.”
“Aydin and Colwin?” Emma guessed, smiling.
Sarah smiled back at her. “Aren’t they just the most wonder me you’ve ever met?” she asked without an ounce of modesty.
Emma grinned. “They are.”
“Let’s eat! I know you half starved! And them, too! Oh! I was so distressed to see them looking so thin!”
Aydin and Colwin both looked at her worriedly when she and Sarah began to ferry the food to the table. She smiled at them with as much reassurance as she could, but, unfortunately, despite the fact that Sarah had soothed some of her anxieties, she wasn’t convinced that her troubles were behind her. The thought that Sarah might be right and she might actually be pregnant buoyed her spirits, but she was afraid to simply accept it.
When they’d eaten, Sarah insisted on taking her upstairs to bathe and rest. Emma didn’t object too strenuously. Her warm welcome had eased her anxieties about Aydin’s and Colwin’s family, but they were still strangers and it was still a strange house and she wasn’t completely comfortable. Even if she hadn’t been exhausted from the travel, her nerves were on edge and it was a welcome reprieve.
She was very happy to discover modern plumbing in the bath, though, and what at least appeared to be a comfortable bed awaiting her.
Wondering whether either or both men would join her on the wide bed, Emma climbed onto the padded surface and sighed with bliss as she sank. Heaven! It was amazing, she thought dreamily, how much one could appreciate the simple things in life just by doing without them for a little while.
* * * *
“How long have Father and Uncle Chandler been gone?” Aydin asked when he and Colwin were finally alone with their mother.
Her shoulders drooped. “Nearly a month!” She covered her face with her hands. “I know it’s stupid—they’re skilled warriors and centaurs besides—but I can’t help but worry about them!”
“Because you love them,” Colwin said quietly. “There is very little that could keep them from returning to you.”
Except death, Sarah thought morosely, but promptly banished the thought. She wasn’t going to let herself think about that! She couldn’t bear to think of it! Men and their damned wars! “I just miss them. I think I’d rather be at summer camp than here, but they wouldn’t have it. They said if they weren’t going to be there to protect me they wanted me here. Of course, it isn’t as bad as it might’ve been. Once they insisted, the others decided they preferred to leave their own women in the city. It seems to strange to be here in the growing season, though, especially when the town is like a ghost town—only a handful of women and children with everyone else at summer camp working on the harvest.”
“The king demanded warriors from the village?” Aydin asked tightly.
“Oh no! All he did was dash up with his army, looking so debonair and manly, and ask that we donate food for the cause, promising to replace it as soon as they could from the stores of his city and everyone was mad to go and fight the hoonans!”
Aydin sent an irritated look. “We have been preyed upon by the hoonans for years, mother! It is no wonder everyone was eager to strike!”
“No, I suppose not and I can certainly agree that life will be a sight better if King Dresden wipes out that nest of hyenias! Or at least trounces them so soundly they’ll think twice about trying to enslave our people!”
Colwin smiled.
“What?”
He shook his head.
“Don’t give me that condescending look, Colwin! These are my people! I belong here.”
Colwin dropped his gaze to his hands and cleared his throat. “How long were you here before you felt like that?”
Sarah sighed and glanced at Aydin. “Honestly, I don’t know. I think it was a gradual sort of thing. This isn’t an easy life for a human and I had a pretty easy life before … but from the moment I fell in love with Aydin, and his father and Chandler, no one could’ve pried me away—especially when I realized I was expecting you.”
Chandler frowned. “So, it was not that you became pregnant that you decided to stay?”
Emma considered that, struggling with the urge to tell them she was almost certain Emma was pregnant and reluctantly discarded it. Emma wouldn’t appreciate it, she knew. She would want to tell them herself, in her own time, and in her own way. “That was part of it,” she finally admitted. “I couldn’t take a centaur baby back to my world and I certainly couldn’t contemplate leaving you. I don’t think I would’ve considered going back even if I hadn’t become pregnant, though. Aydin needed me and I needed him.” She smiled lovingly at Aydin. “And I love your fathers madly.”
She frowned thoughtfully. “I think women are just like men in some respects. The pros have to outweigh the cons. She loves you—both of you. You have to convince her that this world has more to offer her than her own.”
Aydin studied her miserably. “How mother?”
She shook her head at him. “Honey, you’ve dragged that poor girl through hell and back! Don’t bother to tell me you didn’t whitewash things for me, because I won’t believe you and I’ve only to look at you two, and her, to see its been hellish. Make a nest for her. Show her that there’s more to the two of you than brawn! She wants to be convinced to stay. It isn’t as if you’re fighting a battle
of insurmountable opposition, although it might seem like it.”
“You are certain?” Colwin asked doubtfully.
“I’m sure. She’d have to be a complete idiot not to want both of you and she doesn’t strike me as stupid!”
Colwin and Aydin exchanged an unhappy glance and finally rose. “We will go to our place,” Adyin said finally.
Sarah thought that over. “You’re probably right. I’m sure she’s exhausted. It wouldn’t hurt to give her a few days to rest and catch her breath. Don’t give her too long to think things over, though! Remember, nothing says ‘I love you’ to a woman better than a good fuck! We women know that’s how men express their devotion!”
Aydin and Colwin both laughed a little uncomfortably. Aydin lingered until Colwin had gone out and drew his mother into a tight embrace.
Sarah felt her heart contract with love and sympathy at the desperation she sensed in him. He’d been through so much, overcome so much in his life! She was more worried about him than she was Colwin. Colwin hadn’t had the hard knocks Aydin had and he was young enough to handle disappointment better if things went wrong. She wasn’t sure Aydin would ever get over it if Emma left him.
He swallowed audibly. “I am so afraid she will leave me, Mother,” he muttered.
Sarah stroked his hair soothingly. Emma wasn’t leaving, she thought determinedly, if she had to chop the damned tree of knowledge down herself and turn it into kindling! She did something then that she’d promised herself she wouldn’t. “She won’t leave you, darling. She’s carrying your baby—or maybe Col’s.”
He drew away and stared at her in shock. The expressions that flitted across his face only made Sarah feel more like crying. “She told you?”
“Of course not! She’ll tell you when she’s sure. I’m sure. She just isn’t certain yet. You don’t honestly think, between the two of you, that you haven’t gotten her pregnant?”
He frowned. “You think that is enough to make her stay?”
Sarah shook her head at him, catching his face between her hands and going up on tiptoes to kiss him. “Aydin! If you and Col weren’t so madly in love with her that you’re blind, you would see she looks at you the same way you look at her. Let’s just say that will be the clencher. Mind what I said, now! Make a lovely nest for her and her babies—and don’t hesitate to ask me or Clair if you’re in doubt about anything. We’re women, too!”
He grinned at her a little shakily and nodded.
“And don’t get so distracted with that that you forget you’re supposed to wooing her!”
He frowned, but nodded again. She pushed him toward the door. “Go! Clean up and rest! You’ve got work to do! I’ll work on things on this end.”
Aydin stared uneasily at the door his mother had slammed in his face.
“What?” Colwin asked, having returned to make certain that Aydin hadn’t decided to spend the night after all.
Aydin shook his head. “Mother said she would work on things on this end. That makes me very uneasy.”
“Gods! You did not ask her to help?”
Aydin flushed. “Of course I did not!” he snapped. “Do you think I am mad? Bringing one’s mother in is the surest way never to get a mate!”
Chapter Fifteen
Sarah was so transparent Emma didn’t know whether she was more annoyed or amused. She would make some remark about Aydin or Colwin and then cut her eyes at Emma to see how she was receiving the information. It was almost fun pretending to be oblivious just to frustrate their mother, although she discovered she really liked her. It was hard to remember her age, that she was almost old enough to be her mother. It wasn’t just that she didn’t look old. She didn’t act old. She almost seemed like too much fun to be around to be a mother.
She couldn’t help but wonder if she was the same as she’d always been, if that was why her children all seemed so wonderfully well adjusted and friendly or if they’d inherited a good bit of her personality. She hadn’t met the fathers, of course, but although the children obviously took after their fathers in appearance, she thought Sarah’s contribution had been mostly in personality.
Of course, she wasn’t Aydin’s natural mother even though she acted like he was her son and he seemed to think of her as his mother. It made her curious to know about his real mother and she finally asked Sarah if she knew about her.
Sarah reddened. “Oh! Well, that isn’t something we really talk about,” she said uncomfortably. “Teagan had a very … difficult childhood. His mother was raped by a hoonan and although he was raised with Chandler as if he was his full brother, it was just so obvious that he was half hoonan that—Well, there’s no point in trying to whitewash it. He was an outsider, not really accepted, especially among the young females when he became old enough to want a mate. He was terribly lonely and one night he just got rip-roaring drunk and accidently crossed over to our world.
“That’s how we discovered the tree where the gateway is. It’s called the tree of knowledge and Teagan had gone to ask the gods for a mate to ease his loneliness. So, he ended up breeding Aydin on an … uh … an other-worlder.”
“Like us?”
Sarah chewed her lip in indecision and finally tsked. “I trust you. I know you’d never do anything to hurt Aydin. Poor Teagan was so blind drunk, and he’d never seen a horse, you understand and, well, he bred my mare. That’s actually how I ended up here. He’d sobered up and came back to look for the female he’d mated with and he was so horrified to discover she wasn’t a dark centaur like him. He didn’t know what she was beyond a dumb beast—and pregnant. So he and Chandler came back for Aydin’s birth, snatched him and took him home to raise him themselves.
“Unfortunately, he’d inherited a defect from his mother, a disease that effects that particular breed and the poor baby nearly died. They came back and took me so that I could take care of him.
“Of course, it didn’t help that those horrible hoonans had captured him and nearly worked him to death before Chandler and Teagan managed to rescue him.”
“Poor Aydin!” Emma exclaimed. “Poor baby! No wonder he’s so ….” She paused, considering what Sarah had told her. “He wasn’t accepted either, was he?”
Sarah shrugged. “You know how people are—even where we come from. Any child that is a little different can’t seem to fit in, isn’t accepted. They’re teased and bullied and just plain mistreated. I suppose in a way Aydin was spared a lot of that because he was just too sickly when he was little to play with the others. Later—well, the hussies don’t mind sneaking around to slip in his bed, if you know what I mean—he’s a handsome devil! But the bigots don’t want to breed with him because he’s dark, and of course, not just dark. He’s a half-breed.”
Emma frowned, remembering the way Leena had looked them both over. She doubted either one of them had had any problem finding lovers. What hypocrites! “I suppose it was pretty rough on Colwin, too?”
Sarah shrugged. “Not as rough, really. He’s always been strong and healthy and he had the good fortune to look like they do. They are so … snotty about their breeding! But, yes, I suppose so. He had an easier time fitting in than Aydin because of his looks and I think his personality, too, and Logan’s almost had it easy with two big brothers, you know, and of course Clair.” She chuckled. “Let’s just say the males aren’t nearly as prejudiced about such things. She had plenty of males vying for her.”
“I take it the tribe is golden, then?”
Sarah nodded. “I’d forgotten you hadn’t really had much chance to see them. Beautiful people, but as I say ….”
Emma shook her head. “Dresden is dark. I saw centaurs with sorts of different coloring in the lost city.”
“Dresden is dreamy!”
Emma stared at her a moment and then laughed. “I’ll bet Teagan and Chandler wouldn’t be too happy to hear you say that!”
She shrugged. “Well, they won’t! I still think he’s handsome!”
Emma shrugged. “He is.
He isn’t nearly as handsome as Aydin, though … or as sexy.”
Sarah flicked a triumphant look at Aydin, who’d stopped in the kitchen doorway like he’d hit a brick wall. “He does take after his father,” she murmured with amusement when Emma glanced around. “Did you come for supper, sweety? It won’t be done for at least an hour. Why don’t you show Emma around the city?”
Aydin cleared his throat and sent his mother an irritated look. “I had come to ask her if she would like to take a walk.”
Emma bounded up from the stool she’d been sitting on. “I’d love to!”
She was pleased to discover that Colwin intended to join them. She hadn’t seen much of either one of them since they’d reached the city. It was also as if there’d been an unspoken agreement that she would stay with their mother and Sarah had assured her that they were just busy catching up on business that had been neglected while they were away. She’d been impressed to discover that they were stone masons of some repute having gone into their fathers’ business, but Aydin had a thriving business on the side sculpting and Colwin made musical instruments—such as the pan flute Aydin made such beautiful music on.
They showed her around the city, pointing out buildings they’d helped erect, giving her the history of the city, and explaining that the summer camp they’d spoken of was where they spent the growing season since the plateau where the city had been built wasn’t suitable for it. That was when they were most vulnerable to attack by the hoonans, who’d never launched a successful attack upon the city itself.
Since the city was permanent and the summer camp changed year by year, the city was their cultural center. Despite the fact that she’d had plenty of time to become familiar with Sarah’s home, she was still impressed with how modern it was. Electronic technology wasn’t something they had a particular interest in, but they were just as interested in their comfort as the people on her world were. They had fully functioning, completely modern plumbing—hot and cold running water, sewage treatment—the works! It wasn’t just Sarah who had a modern home. They utilized and worked with nature and the site for city had been carefully chosen, not just for its defensibility but also to take advantage of what nature had to offer.
Dark Stallion Page 17